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The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

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Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#131
post #18

As someone who was involved with many internet communities long before reddit, it sounds like the author is just experiencing the eternal September[0]. Pretty much since the day I found out about reddit in... 2008-ish?, everyone in the online communities I knew thought it was filled with awful pseudointellectual teenagers and college students, that the upvote/downvote system was horrible and encouraged people to post…

You're looking at it all wrong. Kind of through the lens of an narcissist. Not nearly as many people have had the opportunity to even become "full" intellectuals. The irony here is that while the world burns, the easiest solution is raising that bar for them by challenging them and leading them into better paradigms, through interaction and debate or even arguments. Without your presence amongst the people on that pl…

I agree with this in principle, but in reality the flood of new people, influence/manipulation by organisations (political and market) and encouragement of features that reward low quality content (emotes, monetisation, etc) mean the site doesn't actually promote the environment you suggest should exist.

Old fashioned forums are still far and away the best 'system' for this, they're just not 'popular' enough any more, particularly with Facebook providing groups within their massive walls.

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#132
post #18

As someone who was involved with many internet communities long before reddit, it sounds like the author is just experiencing the eternal September[0]. Pretty much since the day I found out about reddit in... 2008-ish?, everyone in the online communities I knew thought it was filled with awful pseudointellectual teenagers and college students, that the upvote/downvote system was horrible and encouraged people to post…

It's true that people have been complaining about "eternal september" since at least 2010 when I joined. However IMO reddit really has declined in discussion quality for the most part since then, asides from banning some of the worst subreddits. To say that 2022 reddit is the same as 2010 reddit is preposterous.

The main thing right now is bots. Endless copying & reposting of submissions, and even wholesale copy/pasting comment replies. The reddit staff have to know about this as it's been going on for a while, but seemingly don't care.

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#133

People complaining about Reddit remind me of that quote from Bjarne Stroustrup about computer languages: “There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” A lot of people use Reddit. I've been on since nearly the beginning and seen it go through various phases. They started getting serious about moderation after Gamergate and they're still serious about it since they wa…

The smartest thing reddit has done was learn from Digg. They've done a FUCKLOAD of dumb stuff. A truly phenomenal amount. Some of the issues stem from just growing and having your crowd change and EVERY marketing company out there working to control your content, but they have very impressively managed to make a baffling number of stupid decisions. But, you can opt out. It's dumb that you need to, it's dumb that they…

the day the get rid of old.reddit.com I'll be gone looking for something more to my liking. The retro reddit is the best reddit.

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#134
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Reddit is that they banned unilaterally the right wing.

That is not true e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/chapotraphouse

One sub out of tens or hundreds on the other side won't change reality

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#135
idk I follow only gaming subs and they all seem all right to me. The players just share guides, fan arts, news etc. Sure every sub has some asshole mods but generally it's still not as bad as front page subs (/r/news, /r/politics/ etc.) where basically there is only one message accepted

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#136
post #18

As someone who was involved with many internet communities long before reddit, it sounds like the author is just experiencing the eternal September[0]. Pretty much since the day I found out about reddit in... 2008-ish?, everyone in the online communities I knew thought it was filled with awful pseudointellectual teenagers and college students, that the upvote/downvote system was horrible and encouraged people to post…

You're looking at it all wrong. Kind of through the lens of an narcissist. Not nearly as many people have had the opportunity to even become "full" intellectuals. The irony here is that while the world burns, the easiest solution is raising that bar for them by challenging them and leading them into better paradigms, through interaction and debate or even arguments. Without your presence amongst the people on that pl…

[deleted]

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#137
post #56

I hate how many online communities have centralized themselves around reddit and discord. I'm involved a lot of communities and fandoms where everybody congregates on those two platforms, and those two platforms alone. Things were a lot better in the 00s when these sorts of communities existed primarily on webforums. That said, I'm not sure how many of the problems are problems with reddit itself vs how many of the p…

I'm permabanned from Reddit, as in all my accounts (yes, I let it get so bad I had multiple accounts) and any new accounts (yep... tried making more) are banned based on previous logins and IPs (they're actually pretty thorough with it). Some mods are power tripping, but also the value of a user is now near-zero. As long as you don't piss off too many, your subreddit will be fine. Especially for popular keywords - it…

Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone is really interested in advice from someone who somehow managed to get permabanned on reddit.

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#138
I don't get the popularity of the "mobile first" paradigm. I get it as a cost saving measure, but when you try and make UX fit mobile and desktop both will be worse off.

> bastion of independent thought was never a thing, nor is it possible for reddit-type platforms.

The mechanics of voting and karma organize content as groupthink, and the divisions of subreddits structure grouphink by type of content with mods that enforce their vision of the type. There is very little you can do for independent thought in this content if mods aren't actively trying for that (and they never did). What you get is content decided by the average person interested in some field, with added selections of moderation. This can be good for a few things but thought or indepth conversations aren't one of those.

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#139
As far as I know, outside of egregious violations, most subreddits have their own internal rules.

Different communities seem to go through various periods of success, and my experience has been that it's just as often the fault of a lack of moderation as it is from moderation itself, but MOST often, it's the scale of the community.

Once a community reaches a certain size, moderation is just impossible for the handful of volunteers who do it.

Either way, the article strikes me less as "reddit is declining!" as it is "oh man, things changed and I don't like it."

Re: The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that’s a lie. Try having what used to be the standard opinion about a certain topic less than 10 years ago and expect to be banned. Not just by moderators but by admins.

Give an example - you can do that here.

One word: transgender.

Any light criticism or joke results in a subreddit and site wide ban.

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